THE SURFACE OF NORTHEAST FLORIDA. 45 



A female of that small and handsome, blue-winged 

 yellow warbler, Helminthophila pinus L., is seen in 

 the underbrush along a sandy roadway. It feeds 

 fearlessly on a low shrub within ten feet of me, and 

 once flits to the ground for some morsel which it espies 

 from above. 



Crossing the railway, I enter the low hammock 

 region a large, marshy tract covered with a dense 

 growth of cabbage palmetto and swamp-loving under- 

 brush, and containing numerous pools of blackish 

 water scattered through it. Indeed, so little is the re- 

 gion about Ormond and, for that matter, all north- 

 eastern Florida, raised above the level of the sea, that 

 were the land depressed ten or twelve feet below 

 low water mark, the ocean would once more assert its 

 sway over the larger portion, leaving exposed only 

 narrow ridges along the coast and low islands inland. 

 At present, extensive areas are under water through- 

 out the year, and the surface is made up of an im- 

 mense number of ponds, creeks, lagoons and swamps, 

 intermingled with pine-barrens, hammocks covered 

 with hardwood growth, chaparrals of saw palmetto, 

 and wet marshes overgrown with tall reeds or rank 

 grass. 



In places, tracts of the low hammocks west of Or- 

 niond have been cleared, partially drained, and culti- 

 vated formerly in oranges, now in vegetables. A 

 darkey is plowing in one of the small fields, using a 

 single horse. Following in his furrow I find a num- 



